About halfway through the story, I began thinking the characters were too sly and the plot too shifty to take any of it very seriously.
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Playwright, screenwriter, and director David Mamet has produced a distinct body of cinematic work, all of it characterized by typically clever dialogue, clipped, distancing vocal cadences, and a multitude of plot twists. This time out, in 2001´s "Heist," he tones down the odd speech patterns, but his cleverness and story shifts are still well in evidence. The result is enough to keep one´s attention, certainly, but the film isn´t nearly as persuasive as some of his previous work, like "House of Games," "Things Change," or "The Spanish Prisoner."
In "Heist" Gene Hackman plays the leader of a gang of professional thieves, and just as we´ve seen it done before, he has to go after one last big job before he retires. This time, though, it´s not the crook´s fault. He´s forcibly persuaded to do the heist by a double-crossing fence played by Danny DeVito, in one of his patented loud, irritating, ranting roles. The plot is pretty much a preliminary theft and then the main caper. But, of course, this is a Mamet film so nothing is so simple as it appears. In fact, the film is Mamet´s usual collection of character studies, starting with the old pro, Hackman.
Hackman goes from one film to another playing opposites. He excels in comedy, drama and, here, tough-guy, anti-hero theatrics. No matter how the bad the film he´s in, and this one is not bad at all but merely ordinary by Mamet standards, Hackman is always better than the material. As the shrewd, conniving, world-weary, con-artist, old-pro criminal, Joe Moore, Hackman is almost walking through the part, but he does it brilliantly. As the movie opens, he´s planned a jewelry store robbery down to the last detail, but he gets his face caught on a video camera all the same. Having been marked for the first time in his life, he decides to call it quits. But Bergman (DeVito) won´t let him. Bergman coerces him into a curtain call, the "Swiss job," that involves the theft of millions of dollars in gold bars from a Swiss-bound airliner.
In on the job are Joe´s beautiful young wife, Fran (Rebecca Pidgeon), and his partners, the strong-armed Bobby (Delroy Lindo) and the sweetly gentle Pincus (Ricky Jay). Also along is a slimy character named Jimmy Silk (Sam Rockwell). He´s a hotheaded liability, but he just happens to be Bergman´s nephew, and Bergman wants him along to keep an eye on things. Needless to say, things go wrong almost from the start. Like all such caper pictures, though, the film actually hangs on the last hour, the big job, for its final payoff, and here the film does generate a moderate degree of suspense.
The film is supposed to be a throwback to the old Warner Brothers gangster films of the thirties and forties, and it even signals such business by starting with the Warner Bros. logo in black-and-white before changing to color. But it´s not an old WB gangster film; it´s clearly a Mamet film, which in this case means it can be too clever by half. Like this dialogue toward the opening of the show between Hackman and DeVito: "You plan a good enough getaway, you could steal Ebbets Field," says Joe. "Ebbets Field´s gone," says Bergman. "What did I tell you?" replies Joe. The words are witty, to be sure, and even prophetic and necessary to the script later on, but there are so many sharp rejoinders like this that it begins undermining the credibility of the characters and their situation. I mean, no one is as quick-witted as characters in any of Mamet´s stories, but when the slick repartee is as overdone as it is here, well, it ceases to be realistic.
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[release]9722[/release]